1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to telephony-type communication systems and, more particularly, to establishing call connections by remotely accessing each customer individually and then remotely completing the connection between the customers.
2. Description of the Background Art
The art is devoid of teachings or suggestions pertaining to customer-premises equipment in connection with techniques for: (1) minimizing the cost of toll-type calls for the customer by remotely utilizing two incoming telephone lines serving the customer premises; or (2) preserving the privacy of a called telephone number and, hence, a called party, as placed by a calling party by remotely using the two incoming telephone lines serving the given customer premises; (3) providing heretofore unavailable services such as remotely canceling call forwarding to a first call-forward number and remotely establishing call forwarding to a second call-forward number; or (4) presenting the caller identification (caller ID) of the customer's premises as if the customer were at the customer premises even though the customer may, in fact, be calling from a remotely located premises. (Even though the techniques are couched in terms of two incoming telephone lines to a party, those with ordinary skill in the art will readily appreciate equivalents to such an arrangement of two incoming telephone lines, such as a single Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) wherein two B-channels may serve as the equivalent of two incoming lines.)
Thus, a need exists in the art for such services, encompassing both circuitry and methodology, for providing such cost-minimizing, privacy-preserving techniques, or telephony services which have no counterpart in the presently-existing telecommunications technology.
A first patent representative of the technological field of the present invention is U.S. Pat. No. 5,251,250 issued to Obata et al (Obata). In Obata, there is shown a method and circuitry for storing a caller's telephone number as data in a memory wherein callers' telephone numbers received during an automatic telephone answering state can suitably be retained as data. Later, a user having local access to the memory bank can display the stored telephone numbers to learn about the callers' telephone numbers placed during the user's absence.
A second patent representative of the field is U.S. Pat. No. 4,724,539 issued to Hiskes. As disclosed in Hiskes, a customer is assumed to subscribe to the "third-party" calling service offered by a local exchange carrier. In order to allow the use of the third-party feature, a device is placed at the customer premises which imitates the actions of a person at the customer premises who desires to initiate a third-party or conference call between two other remotely located parties. The device is remotely controlled by a calling party to instruct the device to initiate the conference call to the other parties (one of whom may be the original calling party). The ability to provide such a remote conferencing capability is dependent upon the availability of third-party calling service in the area serving the customer; moreover, the use of a single subscriber line is limiting in the types of new services that may be controlled remotely.
A third patent representative of the field is U.S. Pat. No. 5,452,347 issued to Iglehart. The disclosure of Iglehart is directed towards an enhanced telephone which, in view of the totality of its teachings, is connected on one hand to a standard subscriber loop homing on a conventional, public central office and, on the other hand, to a private line homing on a private branch exchange--in contrast to the inventive subject matter of the present invention wherein the controller and two standard subscriber loops (analog or ISDN) home on the same public central switching office. A primary focus of the Applicant's present invention is to remotely invoke the features of the conventional public central office (call forwarding, cancel call forwarding, and so forth), either directly or upon call-back. The Iglehart disclosure teaches away from access to and control of central-office provided features a conventional central office; in fact, the converse to the inventive subject matter herein is true in Iglehart.
Finally, the subject matter of the Applicant's earlier patent application, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,438,616, discloses techniques for remotely controlling one loop from another loop for the case in which two telephone numbers are stored in a controller by initiating a call to the controller from a remotely-located party. Upon storage of the two telephone numbers, the remotely-located party is disconnected from the controller, and the controller re-establishes a connection with the remotely-located party via one telephone number over the first loop, and calls out on the second line using the second telephone number. The subject matter of the present invention relates to enhancements to these basic operating principles.